OUR FOREIGN FIELDS 


INDIA 


BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS OF 
THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 


NOVEMBER, 1911 


POOR AND NEEDY MILLIONS - 


The empire of India is less than half as large 
as the United States if we include Alaska and 
Hawaii, and only a little more than half the size 
of Australia. But there are more people in India 
than in the whole of the Western hemisphere, 
plus Africa and all the islands of the globe, or 
more than three times the population of the 


United States. 


Only ten and seven tenths per cent of the peo- 
ple of the United States at least ten years of age 
were illiterate in 1900. But in India over ninety 
per cent of the male population could not read 
or write, and of the women not one in every 
hundred can read or write. 


The poverty of the people of India is prover- 
bial. A day laborer receives less than ten cents 
a day when he can get work. The average 
income of the people amounts to less than three 
cents a day per capita, for although men, women, 
and children all work together in the fields, less 
than one half of the people have work, the re- 
mainder being entirely dependent. 


Caste, a social system born of race prejudice 
and fostered by Hinduism, is the greatest hin- 
drance to the progress of Christianity in India. It 
prevents all social progress and thwarts all efforts 
at social reform. It is almost impossible for a 
member of any caste to rise above the dead level 
of the other members of his caste. This renders 
wholesome conditions impossible in business, 
political, social, or religious life. Under the 
caste system one fifth of the Hindu population is 
made up of out-castes who are virtually con- 
demned to a life of misery and degradation. 


THE RELIGIONS OF THE LAND 


If the population of India were to pass before 
you in review there would pass with every bap- 
tized Chnstian 207 Hindus, 62 Mohammedans, 
9 Buddhists, and 8 worshipers of spirits or de- 
mons. According to the latest statistics of mis- 
sion boards there are fewer than one million of 


baptized Christians among the multitudes of 
India. 


More than 200,000,000 of India’s people, or 
two out of three, are held in the bonds of Hindu- 
ism, that reservoir into which have run all the 
false religious ideas which have entered the mind 
of man. Its followers are said to be worshiping 
blindly 330,000,000 gods and goddesses, or 
more than the total number of human beings in 
the empire. Not one of these deities possesses 
such an attribute as love or mercy, and many of 
them are represented by grotesquely hideous and 
loathsome images. The worship of Hindu gods 
at some shrines is indescribably obscene and 
horrible. The immorality connected with this 
religion has poisoned the life of the people. De- 
ceit and dishonesty are common because Hindu- 
ism supplies no moral motive or power. 


There are more Mohammedans in India than 
in any other country of the world, one fifth of 
the population being votaries of that religion. In 
almost every sacred city of Hinduism may be 
seen the mosques of Islam, whose low standards 
of purity have swept over India and doomed 
one third of the women to prison-like seclusion. 
Mohammedanism is gaining many converts every 
year from among the depressed classes. 


INDIAN METHODISM 


There are more members of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church in India than in all the rest 
of the world, outside of the United States and 
Protestant Europe. No other denomination, ex- 
cept the Church of England, reports so many 
baptized Indian Christians. Of the nearly 
1,000,000 baptized Christians indicated by the 
latest statistics about one fifth are reported by 
the Methodist Episcopal Church. . It is said that 
185 different languages and dialects are spoken 
by the various races and tribes in India, at least 
35 of which are used by Methodist Episcopal 


preachers in their work. 


The five Conferences and two Mission Con- 
ferences in India reported in 1910, 117 men 
and 224 women missionaries, 240 ordained and 
1,569 unordained Indian preachers, besides 
3,724 other Indian workers. There were 148,- 
598 church members, who contributed over 
$100,000 for Christian work in the year. The 
3,715 Sabbath schools had 165,019 students, 
and 46,201 were studying in the 1,571 edu- 


cational institutions of various grades. 


Every type of missionary work is illustrated in 
Indian Methodism. Methodist missionaries are 
conducting churches for English-speaking people 
besides the many for the dark-skinned people of 
the land. ‘The education of the people is for- 
warded by an extensive school system, compris- 
ing all grades of instruction from the kindergarten 
to the large colleges at Lucknow and the theo 
logical seminaries at Bareilly and Baroda. There 
are Methodist hospitals in several parts of the 
country. Many of India’s boys and girls are 
fitted for useful lives in Methodist industrial 
schools. Three great Methodist Publishing - 
Houses issue millions of pages of Christian litera- 
ture annually. f 


THE APPEAL OF NECESSITY 


There is a district in one of the India Confer- 
ences embracing a territory of about 60,000 
square miles (equal to the area of Maine, Con- 
necticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and 
Vermont) and a population of about 3,750,000. 
In this district we have two Methodist mission- 
aries and their wives, in two towns 175 miles 
apart, three women of the Woman’s Foreign 
Missionary Society, and about a hundred re- 
cently converted native workers. 

Bishop Warne says: ““You could travel a 
hundred miles in the Punjab, where towns are 
close together, where there is not a living soul 
preaching the gospel. In Rajputana there are 
some states of a million of people in which there 
is not a Christian worker.” 

A district superintendent in South India, who 
had been in charge of two districts, writes that 
having been relieved of one of these districts he 
then had only 7,000 square miles and 1,500,- 
000 people in his territory. 

In the last four years more than 1,200 bap- 
tized Christians of a Conference district in the 
northern part of India have been transferred to 
other missions because our own mission could 
not provide workers to care for them. 

A preacher in Northwest India Conference 
said to a district superintendent: “‘Give me a 
dozen more workers and we will have a thousand 
baptisms in the course of a week and be able to 
care for them also.”’ Another said: ‘‘Give me 
but three more workers to teach the people and 
in the course of two months there will be one 
thousand baptisms from the Chamar caste.” 

The Bareilly Theological Seminary is at- 
tempting to meet the needs of the whole Hindu- 
stani speaking field, representing a population of 


about 100,000,000, but at the present time the 


North India and Northwest India Conferences 
alone could profitably use more new preachers 
than are now studying in the seminary. 


During part of July and August, 1910, the 
headmaster of Reid Christian College, Lucknow, 
was compelled to turn away four or five pros- 


pective students daily for lack of accommoda- 
tions. . 


One of the leading industrial schools in India 
is seriously hampered by debt and its manager — 
writes that for lack of funds he must each week 
turn away numbers of boys seeking admission. 


PROFITABLE INVESTMENTS 


$20 will support an orphan for a year. 


$20 will support a child in a boarding school 
for a year. 


$25 will enable a preparatory student to remain 
in a school one year. 


$30 to $50 will enable a college student to 
remain in college one year. 


$40 will support a pastor-teacher for a year. 


$50 to $100 will pay the salary of a native 
pastor for a year. 


$50 will build a rural chapel. 
$200 will build a village church. 
$500 will build a church school. 
$1,000 will build a church in a town. 
Larger sums are needed for larger and more 
permanent buildings. 


Send the money to the Missionary Secretaries, 


150 Fifth Avenue, New York City. 


